Many industries, such as pharmaceutical, food, plastic, and waste, require material particles to be exposed to predetermined conditions, such as heat or cold, as a part of an overall process. Various types of equipment have been developed to integrate the conditioning of particles with other production processes.
One such apparatus dries product as the product is gradually moved across conveying surfaces towards the apparatus discharge. The conveying surfaces are porous and enclosed within a vibrating vessel. The vibrations fluidize the particles and cause them to move forward through the apparatus. Air flow normal to the direction of particle flow provides heated or cooled air through the porous surface and the product. Such a single deck, rectangular design requires many square feet of valuable production space.
Alternative designs have attempted to reduce the square footage of production space required to condition material. One such design uses a stack of non-vibrating, slowly rotating trays. Material to be conditioned is dropped onto a top tray having several slots providing fluid communication to a lower tray. As the tray of material rotates within a conditioned chamber, a wiper pushes material through one of the slots in the tray. The material from the top tray then drops onto a second tray where the same action is repeated. The material continues to be wiped into slots on successive trays until it is released through a discharge spout at the bottom of the apparatus. While this utilizes less square footage than the first apparatus and provides longer exposure of the material to the predetermined conditions, the trays do not allow vertical air flow through the particles. Further, the trays do not integrate material separation with conditioning.
It would be an improvement in the art to have a material conditioner that uses minimal floor space. It would be a further improvement in the art to have a material separator that could be adapted to segregate oversized and/or undersized particles of material as the material is being conditioned.